Underworld
by Tara1189
Summary: "I rather like having you down here. Like Persephone." Ginny/Tom
1. Metamorphoses

**Summary: "I rather like having you down here. Like Persephone." Ginny and Tom, told in five parts.**

* * *

><p><strong>U N D E R W O R L D<strong>

_**i. Metamorphoses**_

The cold pressed her into the stones like the shadow she was. Imprisoned by ink and scales and old bindings. Strange flashes, events, were fragmented in her memory… but she was a book, and how could books have memories? She was parchment, a page, a canvas, the ghost of old words fleeting across her mind, the black patterns writhing in her veins, emanating through her skin,

… _have my devotion… bound body and blood and soul… if you are _willing_… _

Her heart. Pulsing. And beneath that, another echo, another heartbeat, close and intimate in the darkness. Invasive. Curled up within herself, she listened to the steady rhythm. Fainter. Then stronger again.

Why could she not move? Why could she not remember?

The air shivered damply against her icy skin. Slowly, dragging herself up from the cloying, watery depths, Ginny opened her eyes.

She could hardly see. A wash of green light flickered across her weakening vision. Coiling tendrils of mist creeping along the floor, the walls, the yawning stone ceiling. The chamber long and dim, the light bleeding from its shadowy edges. And beneath the towering statue of Salazar Slytherin, the three of them, in stasis - two living and one dying. Slowly, memory emerged through the dense veils that clogged the atmosphere of her mind.

Without seeing, she was acutely aware of Tom standing in the aureole of iridescent mist, felt the quickening throb of his returning heartbeat, his every inhalation that stole the breath from her lungs. He was inside her, everywhere, a part of her very being. She knew it because the moment she ceased to know it, she would die.

Wet and bloody, his robes torn, Harry stumbled weakly towards her, the great sword dragging along the ground at his side, leaving a trail of smoking blood in its wake. In the shadows, something lay coiled and massive behind him, something serpentine and monstrous.

Tom was staring at him, slender hands curled into fists at his sides. "You killed my Basilisk." And suddenly, he was a sixteen year-old boy again, agitated and tense, the colour high in his pale cheeks. "Do you know how _long _those take to grow to full size?"

The sword fell to the ground with a clatter of metal that echoed resoundingly off the ancient walls. Harry dropped to his knees beside her, his hands slick with blood and water, shaking her limp form. Ginny saw him through a blur of mist and darkness. She tried to reach out to him, but her hands would not obey her mind. They were Tom's now.

Harry's painfully familiar face close to hers. Pale, bleeding, desperate. Faintly, she saw his lips move, disturbing the still green air. _Fight, Ginny. Fight._

But she had been fighting for so long. She was just so tired, so _weak -_

And so _cold -_

"Ginny, _please -"_

That quiet voice spoke again. Cool, refined, educated, twisting its way into her soul. She felt it reverberate through the caverns of her dying heart. "You're wasting your time, Harry Potter. She knows she's mine."

"No," whispered Harry.

"Don't pretend you care about her. If it weren't for her stupidity, I would not be here."

Harry turned his head quickly, black hair whipping against his face. "You - " he snarled. "You did this to her -"

"I took nothing that she didn't offer me willingly. If she chooses to give away her soul so carelessly, who am I to refuse it?"

Tom came closer, smiling. She could only watch through blurred eyes, immobile and helpless, as he sat beside her, long legs stretching out before him. Cool fingers sliding under her cheek, turning her face towards him. She whimpered and he hushed her, his exhalation of breath deceptively soothing against her chilled skin. Her world narrowed to dark eyes, skin pale as fever and hair black as ink. Spilling into the corners of her vision. In the vague, distant background, Harry's image was blurring, becoming fainter, while Tom was becoming ever more clearer.

"You see how completely I've possessed her?" he murmured absently, fingers caressing gentle circles around her pallid brow. She was so weak his fingertips left bruises. "Not that it was hard… she always was a useless little nobody, barely any personality to take over. But a blank slate was all I needed." He sighed. "I am grateful to her for that, at least."

Harry was speaking from somewhere very far away, his voice echoing strangely… _no, Harry, don't leave me here, please don't leave me… _Fingers worn to bone clutched at empty air. She needed to find him. She needed to find him or she would die.

… _where are you?_

_You don't need to worry about Harry. _She felt Tom's smile curve against her bones. He was cradling her limp body in his lap. Long fingers stroked through her damp red hair that spilled like ruptured virginal blood over the deep black of his robes. _It's just us now. Isn't that what you wanted?_

Numbness, everywhere. Darkness thicker than blood pooled in her eyes. She swayed and swayed, faintness overcoming her. And the cold, deeper and more piercing than anything she had ever known, was inside her -

Her head fell back against the stone. Inky blackness overcame her, like a rush of water through her heart and lungs, and then there was nothing but silence.

* * *

><p><strong>November 11th<strong>**, 1992**

_Dear Tom, I was having the most horrible dream _

_Tell me._

_I'm starting to forget it now I'm awake. But I remember it was dark. And I was so cold, colder than I've ever been. And I - I think I was dying, Tom, I_

_You sound healthy enough to me._

_But all this stuff that's been happening at school - remember I told you how I blacked out at Halloween? And I'm not sleeping properly… I've started keeping you under my pillow at night because I feel like I _can't _sleep without you close to me… I've just got an awful feeling and I _know _that Percy's watching me _

_Such hysteria after one bad dream? I never thought you a coward, Ginevra._

_Don't you ever have nightmares, Tom?_

_I am paper and ink. It's hardly an affliction I suffer from. But I can help you sleep, if you want. Would you like me to?_

_How?_

_I can do many things, Ginevra. I'm not like others, remember? But you'll learn that soon enough. Now listen to me very carefully. Hold your quill over the page, just… there. Close your eyes. I need you to trust me. You do trust me, don't you? _

_Yes, Tom._

_Good. Then do exactly as I tell you…_

* * *

><p>Frozen in the stone dark, a fragile virgin sleeping in a enchanted coffin. Silence. The echo of water. <em>Drip. <em>Sonorous. Stirring life into her empty bones. Her pulse beating through the stillness.

_Pulse? _

Then -

_I'm… _alive_…_

Warmth rushed into her heart and her eyes flew open. She inhaled sharply. The air was cold and damp. Each breath a knife through her ribs. The world appeared to her slowly through an tourmaline-washed veil. Watery light, green and coalescing. And _shimmering -_

Her fragile hand reached out -

_Beautiful -_

The blood surged warm in her veins. She watched it flow in fine traceries (dark blue - the colour of ink) beneath the skin of her outstretched wrist, half-fascinated… oh, but she was still delirious… in this enveloping, languorous daze, she could remember nothing after Harry threw the sword aside and knelt beside her, bleeding and determined -

Harry - _Harry_ had saved her -

She tried to stand and a wave of dizziness overcame her. Emerald mist blurred into eddying stone and she staggered. Cool hands steadied her. A shudder of cold wracked her body. The flesh along her arms prickled strangely.

"So you're awake," said Tom. "I thought you really were gone for a moment."

Ginny gave a faint cry that echoed off the cavernous walls. The surrounding mist dispelled slightly and through a green web of colour she saw -

An unveiling. Eyes studying her, dark and curious. His mouth like a knife's blade. He looked youthful and lovely in the lambent glow, dangerously, brilliantly _alive. _He reached out to touch her hair but she flinched away.

"Oh, don't be such a child," he said impatiently. "You're alive, aren't you?"

Horror gripped her insides. She stumbled away from him, retreating until her back hit slick stone. The fog was dissipating from her mind and blind fear had taken over. She curled her arms around her weakened legs, shaking. She could feel the pulse pounding in her head (_where his fingers had caressed her oh-so-gently_). The green and shadowy world pressed in around her. This could not be real, _he _could not be real. Not like this. Not alive.

She tried to move her lips. They were almost frozen. "I thought I was going to die."

He smiled. "Did you?"

Tom wandered across the chamber, idly examining an outstretched hand that gleamed ghostly-pale, though he was so much more than a ghost, this living flesh and blood boy. "It would have been easier, I suppose. But I think it's better this way. If a phoenix can be reborn, why not you?"

"_Why_ me?" The words left her in a hoarse whisper.

"I might tell you, one day." She could hear the curving smile in his words. "But not now."

Another shudder of cold wracked her body; she looked wildly around for some means of escape, for a bird (there _had _been a bird, she was sure of it), for Harry, for _something -_

Nothing greeted her eyes but emptiness and silence. They had all gone, left her to die down here, just as Tom had said they would _(after all, why would anyone risk their lives for someone as pathetic and useless as _you?)

"Where's Harry?" she demanded. Her frail shoulders stiffened with reawakened energy. _If you've hurt him -_

"He's alive. For now."

"Why?"

"Because he's not ready to die yet. _I'm _not ready to kill him. I thought I was… but I'm not. I'm barely corporeal. I have no wand to call my own. When I do it, it has to mean something. I have to _use_ him. Or at least use what he will bring me. His death - the moment of killing him… and that sword."

Ginny stared at him. "You mean he escaped." And - for a brief, shining moment - a burst of triumph flared in her heart.

Tom clenched a long-fingered hand. Quiet, assured, deadly. "He'll come to me eventually."

"I'll escape too -"

"You can't," he said simply.

She clenched her fists stubbornly. _I can. I _will._ I fought you for a year and I'm not dead. I'll get away somehow -_

"Try," he said.

Ginny didn't need telling twice. She ran.

Splashing through the icy water, sodden robes clinging to her trembling legs… If only she didn't feel so _weak… _The gallery of monstrous snakes leered down at her with immobile eyes. The stone walls melting and dripping, streaming into shallow channels that swirled and eddied around her in confusion. She choked in horror as she stumbled over discarded sheathes of snakeskin that curled at her feet, scaled and enormous. Blood was pooling in the dank water, thick and sanguine and _cold_ -

The entrance, slick and dark, loomed before her. Unhesitating, she plunged into the blackness, across the circular threshold and -

Screamed.

The deepest flash of emerald green burned her eyes. A sensation of tendrils spreading through her chest, paper and ink knotting into her flesh. Sinking in between her ribs. She doubled over, gritting her teeth against the pain. It was like dying all over again. She was too cold, it hurt too much -

She gasped for air -

"Did you really think it would be that easy?"

Ginny put a shaking hand against the wall. Slowly, she turned back to face Tom. Tall, slender and dark-haired, he had not moved from where the liquid light masked him in an eerie halo.

She looked up at him through watering eyes. Her chest was burning with cold. "Why am I - what have you done to me?"

He looked at her thoughtfully. "You still don't realise how much a part of me you've become, do you? Did you think that surrendering your soul comes without consequences? That ties so strong can be severed? There is too much of me under your skin, too much of you that answers to me. So if I wish you to stay here… you'll stay. After all, I'm the only one who understands the beating heart of this place."

Despair was a cold weight inside her chest. _No - Harry, my family… they'll come here - they'll find me -_

"They would not dare."

He approached her easily, light and graceful in his schoolboy's uniform, and even now, knowing what he was (_who _he was) a part of her ached for that nearness, the memory of cruel solace.

"I suppose you should thank me." A gentle hand on her shoulder. "After all, I have given your life meaning, kept you from death. All I ask for in return, is obedience."

If she could have killed him then, she would have. But she was only a child of eleven without a wand, and _he - _

The words came to her, black and fluid, etching themselves into her heart. _I'm not like others. I am so much _more…

His cold eyes met hers. "Make yourself comfortable, Ginevra. You'll be here a while."


	2. Chimera

_**ii. Chimera**_

She dreamed of warmth, of the smell of grass and sunlight pulsing gold on her skin. Blue eyes, green eyes. Loving eyes. Love in a time before hate. The laughter of identical, red-haired children. Red robes, red hair, red blood. She dreamed of poppies and phoenix wings. Fire warm enough to burn away the cold.

She awoke to spectral green light and silence, mirrored pools and dead things. Trapped in the thrall of a whispered voice and the fleeting touch of long fingers. The mist, the air, seemed to writhe with his presence. He was in the very stones. Ginny felt like she could only breathe when he was close by. When he was gone, she felt incomplete somehow, like she didn't fit inside her own skin. She hated him, and she was drowning without him.

So to keep her head above the silver and green floodwaters that threatened to pull her under, she wrote things. She wrote on the walls, on the floor. She wrote about the feel of grass under her feet, the rush of air when flying, the smell of rain as it fell on the chicken coop at the Burrow. But then had come candlewax and leather-bound books and crisp white paper. And after that she wrote about the cold darkness, the smile that tore her mind open and poisoned her heart. Words, words, words. Looping, scrawling letters that trailed across the slick stones. The scratching of a quill against the hard surface. It reminded her of the world above, that there had been a time before Tom, a time before her life was water and reflections, a time before words were lies and reality was as blurred and liquid as the swirling depths of emerald quicksilver that swallowed her whole.

When he came back to her she felt it instinctively even before she saw him through the parting tendrils of dense air. Invisible chains like interlocking serpent scales drew her towards him. She was losing the awkwardness that inevitably came on the cusp of adolescence, acquiring instead a strangely fluid, serpentine grace that she could only have learned from him.

"Let me tell you what's been happening in the world," Tom said.

The mist hung around them in heavy green veils. The chamber echoed the whisper of his steps across the ancient floor. "It knows me, you see," he had told her once, his voice lingering in the elusive air. "This place recognises me and what I am. What I _will _be. When the older self is gone and the new shall rise stronger than ever."

"Your older self," she choked. Sickness roared inside her. "You mean -"

"But of course. The world cannot hold two of me." His voice was distant, dreamy, lost in reflection. "The world can barely hold _one _of me."

Now he stood before her, calm and collected save for the intensity in his eyes. "London is burning. Have you ever seen the sky on fire, Ginevra? Believe me, it is a sight you would never forget. It brings back memories, memories I thought I had -" he broke off abruptly, looking away, his gaze dark and distant. He pressed his hands against his forehead, startlingly white against the black of his hair.

"You're tired," she observed flatly.

"Mmm." His fingers were tracing light circles over his brow. "Having a destiny can be a wearying thing sometimes."

He leaned back against the cool stones, studying the vast, cavernous ceiling that opened above them. "I have worries, concerns. They weigh upon my mind. It is no easy task, making the world anew. There is still so much I have to accomplish. I have been gone for too many years. So much time has been wasted, and the world has changed almost beyond recognition."

_Yes, _Ginny thought, watching him with an old expression on her young face. _Tell me. Tell me everything like I used to tell you, and one day, when you least expect it, I'll do what you did to me. I'll destroy you with it._

"I need the ring," he murmured. "The ring that is bound to my other self. To change the future, I must follow the past, and ensure that my fate is not the same as his. Everything depends on it. He eludes me yet. But I'll find him."

"I don't understand," she said.

Tom looked up, as though seeing her for the first time.

"Oh," he said carelessly. "Your brother's dead."

Those words, so simple. So callous. Ginny staggered. The air rushed out of her world. Her mind reeled. It could not be true, he was lying, just as he always lied -

Her hands trembled, and she was shaking, shaking from head to foot. And him standing there, so calm.

She feel the thundering of her heart in her ears. Her vision blurred from green to red. Emotion, blinding and uncontrollable, was rising within her -

"You Weasleys throw away your lives so easily," Tom was saying. "Why is that?"

"Who - _who_ -" She could not speak. Could not _think -_

He shrugged indifferently. "What does it matter? After all, one blood traitor is the same as another -"

The side of his face split open.

Ginny felt a warm spray of his blood splash against her cheek, hot and wet. She hadn't spoken. Hadn't moved. But there it was. A terrifying gash blazing down the line of his face, dark and vivid against his white, white skin.

Tom put a shaking hand to his bleeding face. He stared at her. "You -"

Ginny stared. How had she done that? She was trembling with the aftermath of uncontrolled magic, the heat dancing at the tips of her fingers, boiling in her veins. She had hurt him. She had made him bleed. Something uncoiled inside her (_a creature with the head of a lion and the tail of a serpent_) -

Rising from the stones, he looked like a snake about to strike; the coiling tension, the wide, hateful eyes, the snarling hiss of his mouth. Blood streamed from the open wound, his eyes glowing darkly through the hideous crimson mask.

"You do know," he said quietly, "That men have died screaming for less than what you've just done to me?"

A wild scream of laughter filled her chest, bursting through the thin bones, erupting from her hoarse throat. _Kill me then, Tom. Then I'll be free of you._

He regarded her contemplatively. Long fingers deep in her mind. Then he said, "Perhaps I _should_ kill you."

She looked up at him. Red hair hung over her face, red as the sheets of blood staining his pale skin. She didn't care. If he killed her now, at least she would have had the satisfaction of hurting him before he did.

"But no… that's what you want, isn't it? You still don't realise that there _is _nothing worse than death."

"Tell me," she forced through clenched teeth, "_Which of my family is dead."_

He paused, thinking about it for a moment. "The one you always complained was fussing over you. The prefect."

"_Percy," _she breathed. Mist cloyed and eddied in her mind. She sank mindlessly to the floor. Solid and cold beneath her, in a nightmare where nothing was real…

"He reminded me of myself, in a way. Gifted, ambitious. But he chose family, in the end. _Your _family."

She didn't recognise her own voice. "You _killed _him."

"Of course I killed him." He was watching her curiously, as though grief were something completely unfamiliar to him. "You see," he said, after some moments. "How useless sentiment is - how weakening. How do you expect to master the magics of this world if you cannot even master yourself?"

Ginny could not recognise the words through the roaring in her ears. _Percy, _she thought numbly. Percy with his serious face and horn-rimmed glasses, Percy scolding her for not keeping her books in order, Percy pushing a steaming vial of Pepperup potion into her hands…

_It's my fault… he always tried to help… if I'd _told _him about Tom, if I hadn't been so_ scared_, he would done something, he would have stopped him, before, before -_

"Pathetic," Tom muttered, and left her seated, dry-eyed and burning, on the cold stones.

But she didn't cry. She already knew that tears were of no use in this place.

* * *

><p><strong>December 22nd<strong>**, 1992**

_It was you. _

_Hello, Ginevra._

_YOU LIED TO ME._

_So you have learned the truth at last, I see._ _It took you long enough to get there._

_You petrified Mrs Norris and Nearly Headless Nick. You attacked Colin and Justin._

_No, dear one. _You _did._

_I didn't - I don't remember - you _made _me -_

_I? I am bound within the pages of a book. How could I make you do anything?_

_You did you did you did you DID_

_And what if I did? Don't tell me you never thought about getting some of them out of the way - that clever Mudblood, for instance? We can go after her next, if you like. No one will find out, no one will ever know. It can be our secret. The things you've _said _about her - who would have thought that little Ginny Weasley could be so vicious?_

_I'll tell someone. I'm going right now -_

_And who will believe you? A hysterical first year who hasn't been sleeping and has no memory of where she has been? An infatuated child who would say _anything _to stop the school suspecting Harry Potter? And if they do believe you? What will they think of Arthur Weasley's daughter attacking Mudbloods? I doubt he would keep his job at the Ministry for very long, not with his little girl being thrown to the Dementors. Because this is _Dark Magic, _Ginevra. Enough to earn you a life sentence at Azkaban, at least. _

_I won't let you hurt anyone -_

Let _me? Child, you _are _me. Bound body and blood and soul. You are my eyes and hands and my will and I will _never_ let you go, do you understand me?_

_Tom -_

_Now, poor thing, you must be tired after all this exertion. Why don't you lie down and go to sleep? Let me take over things for a while._

_No - _no _- Tom, you can't do this you WON'T - stop please I've gone numb I can't_

_Shut up. What makes you think you can resist me? That you have the _right? _I say that there will be another attack tonight, and you _will _open the Chamber -_

_please no -_

_No? You once swore that you would do _anything _for me. Blindly, obediently, without question. You are the servant of Lord Voldemort now, remember that. And I will never leave you alone…_

* * *

><p>He found her at the base of the statue (why did this place always bring her back <em>there?<em>) bruised and barely conscious, covered in dirt and water, freckles standing out like spots of blood against her pallid skin. The last thing she remembered was a flash of searing light, ancient magic pulling at the threads of her skin, and stone shattering around her, falling on her, burying her.

Tom knelt beside her, an unreadable expression on his pale face. Cold fingers pressing against her faintly fluttering pulse.

"Never try anything like that again," he whispered against her damp hair. "Never."

Ginny moaned quietly and tried to move. Her bones groaned at the effort. Eyes straining to focus in the tangible gloom. The chamber stretched before her, long and serpentine. "_Lumos," _she whispered, unthinking, and the wand clutched in her numb fingers flared into life.

His mouth thinned, the light flickering behind him casting strange shadows beneath his dark eyes. He prised the wand from her trembling hand. "How did you get hold of this?" Then he shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You know you can't leave here. But then, why would you try?"

A rasping laugh forced its way past her dry, cracked lips. "Did you really think," she muttered, her voice thick with hatred, "That I would just _stay_ here?"

For a moment she thought he really was going to kill her. But the tension in his clenched hands relaxed and he smiled down at her almost fondly. "No. I didn't think you so obedient as all that." A pause as he regarded her wonderingly. "But you tried to _kill me._" He didn't sound angry at this, only curious.

She could hardly speak through the roaring pain in her skull. "I had to do something."

Tom chuckled indulgently. "Didn't you understand? I _can't _die. I have protected myself - protected myself in ways you can't imagine. But if you keep trying to do this, to _escape me_, it will kill you. Do you understand that?"

"Why should you care?" She lifted her aching head from the flagstones to look at him.

"Because," he said softly, "What are you but another part of me? How could I allow you to destroy a part of myself?" His lips stirring against her cheek, the whisper of breath icy cold on her ear. "Did you think, for a moment, that I would _let _you?"

Lightly, he brushed the tips of his slender fingers across her face, smoothing the tangled wet hair back from her brow. "Tell me," he said, his quiet voice hard, "That you will never do anything so foolish again."

She closed her eyes wearily. "I promise, Tom."

A pause in which she could feel the weight of his gaze on her. The chill, cloying air laid a cold touch on the surface of her flesh, welcoming her back into the enfolding depths of its prison.

"You're lying," he said at last. "I always know when you're lying."

"How… bloody… clever of you."

She rose from the water. Hair like Fiendfyre fell wildly over her thin shoulders.

Long fingers curled around her wrist, biting into the sharp bones. Ginny winced but made no sound. Through lowered lids, she watched the curves of his face, concentrated and absorbed. "You're dangerous," he said thoughtfully. "I didn't expect that. Twice now you have hurt me. It won't happen a third time."

"Did you tell Harry that before he escaped?" Ginny managed a bright hot, defiant smile. Harry, who always survived and who refused to die…

She felt a convulsive shudder pass through him, his face darkening with anger. "His time will come. Do you think I left any of this to _chance? _Fate has marked him and will bring him to me. But I will not make the same mistakes as the one that came before. No, I have waited too long for that. Harry will come because he cannot stay away, and when he does, I will destroy him. And _you, _sweet Ginevra,will be there to watch."

Ginny looked away, blinded by her reflection in the mirrored water. She suddenly felt very cold and alone.

Tom smiled at her. Voice soft, he said, "Did you really think, love, that I would end it without you?"


	3. Odyssey

_**iii. Odyssey**_

He had been gone for weeks, months (years?), longer than he had ever left her. Ginny began to think that he really had abandoned her at last, left her to die in this place. But could she really die here, alone without him?

Again, she saw his white face, felt the tension in his hands as he cradled her bruised (_but not broken_) body. The calm certainty when he smiled down at her. _Don't you understand? I _can't _die._

Tom was gone, but his presence was all around her, in every breath of mist, in every echo and whisper and cool touch of water. The further she went from the heart of the chamber, the more the world began to blur and fade at the edges; the effort of seeing how far she could walk away made her sick and faint. Unable to tolerate the aching in her head, the roaring in her ears, the bruises that blossomed in shades of black and indigo ink beneath her skin, Ginny realized that he truly hadn't lied about her dying if she tried to escape, that she was shackled to this place by flesh and soul and magic older than the world.

Sometimes, she saw (or was it she dreamt?) far-away places; strange scenes that visited her without warning, surging over her like the clear silver-green tides of sleep. She felt burning desert sands beneath her feet and stood in the jade-green silence of a bamboo forest. Sometimes she was in a tent thick with incense-smoke, and gold lamps swinging overhead _(such knowledge is not for you to possess)_; then that too rushing beneath her and away to the sweet, humid scent of monsoon rains. She knew it must be Tom, what he was seeing, and that he was out there somewhere and still alive, but why would he leave her so long in this way?

He came back to her quite unexpectedly one evening, appearing silently beneath the towering shadow of Salazar Slytherin's carven features. He looked different in some hard-to-place way, the youthful curves of his face sharper, more defined. There were patterns and symbols on his robes, written in a language she could not understand, and he carried a new, strange power that smelt of the desert and ancient things. His black hair had grown longer, curling past his ears and brushing his collar. His eyes flashed with depths of hidden knowledge.

"Ginevra," he said. "Do you want to know where I've been?"

She tilted her head up to face him. She was taller now - but then, so was he. Her voice was low. Time had faded the fire and passion of her anger to a sullen, weary contempt. "That would imply I cared."

Tom didn't seem to hear her. "Tibet," he said. "Among other places."

She thought that was all he would say, but instead, he sat down beside her and began to talk. He talked of the people he had met on his travels - seers and alchemists, spirit guides and dream walkers. And, finally, shamans. Those ancient ones who stood alone under the stars and read the portents of coloured sands. Those elders could have held the world in their hands, but were content only to watch and observe as the earth spun beneath the vast desert sky. Tom had not been. So he had taken their power, their knowledge, and left them among their clay and animal bones, their blood turning black under the moon.

Then he talked of past civilizations that had risen and fallen among the sands and the forgotten magics he had uncovered from their dusty ruins. He talked of forbidden tomes written in lost languages and the secrets contained within that he had translated and mastered. He talked of the paths he had travelled; along the Silk Road, into the Himalayas, through the arid plains of the Gobi desert. His pale face was flushed and animated as he spoke, gesticulating with his long hands.

"So much I have seen, so much I have learned. You would not believe half the things I could tell you. It took me a long time, but I found what I was looking for."

Ginny knew instinctively what it was and recoiled in sudden horror as he plunged a hand into the voluminous folds of his robes and reverently drew out –

_No – no – I can't look -_

But she did. The egg was larger than she had imagined; its smooth surface a shimmering curve of green and bronze. Tiny veins, like precious ore, threaded across the shell in intricate patterns. Tom ran a caressing hand over it, and Ginny thought it was the closest thing to love she had ever seen in his eyes. "Here," he said. "Touch it. Feel how hard the shell is."

The stone was deathly cold beneath her shaking fingers, a chill emanating from the still surface that made her feel deadly sick. She looked up at him, questioning, yet unsure she wanted to know the answer. "But I thought -"

"You thought what? You believed old Professor Binns' bedtime stories of Basilisks being hatched from chicken's eggs and toads?" He laughed derisively. "The _true _creature of Slytherin requires a _little _more than that to come into this world. So take good care of it, won't you?"

_You idiot, _she thought with a flash of contempt. _The moment your back is turned, I'll smash it to powder -_

"Try it and you will be screaming for days." His voice was quiet. Then he smiled. "Don't sulk. I have something for you." A silver chain with links fine as gossamer glittered in his outstretched palm, a green-stoned snake hanging from its clasp, swinging between his long fingers. "You see, Ginevra. I didn't quite forget you."

Closer still. His presence sliding over her like a dangerous serpent, inside her very blood. The cold melted along her bare shoulder, the fleeting ghost of a touch. Her skin was pulsing. Beating. Strokes of dark hair falling over a pale brow. His mouth was a breath away. His voice a command, low and silken.

"Try it on."

With a burst of energy, Ginny flung it across the chamber. The necklace landed in a pool of water with a faint splash and sank, shimmering, into the murky depths.

"There's no need for that." With a lazy flick of his wand, the chain landed back in his outstretched hand. "Now be a good girl and put this on."

She didn't move. Her smoke-dark eyes blazed.

"Of course," Tom said musingly, "I could just kill you where you stand."

Her shoulders fell forward in defeat. She could have resisted, but she felt strangely drained and tired, tired of it all. There was no use fighting him. He would have his way in the end. He always did. After all, he had mastered the magics of this world while _she -_

Ginny gritted her teeth, forcing down a torturous shudder as he slid his cool hands through her hair, twisting it above her head while he fastened the delicate catch around her neck. The silver seared cold against her skin. Pale fingers lingered a moment too long, pressed against the hollow of her collarbones. Her pulse throbbed. His breath misted chill in the space between them. Then he released the mass of red curls, the ringlets falling in a disordered spill down her back. The emerald serpent curled at the base of her throat, diamond eyes flashing in the subterranean gloom.

"I knew a locket like this, once," Tom murmured absently, as though lost in the depths of a dream. "And I'll find it again, soon enough. I might give you that one, too, if you'd like."

Slowly, he drew back and regarded her thoughtfully, with a quiet satisfaction.

"Green suits you, I think."

* * *

><p><strong>November 23<strong>**rd****, 1992**

_Dear Tom, I_

_Three days, Ginevra._ Three days_._

_I know, Tom, I'm sorry, but I've been so tired and ill I'm having trouble keeping up with my classes… Professor McGonagall told me I'll fail Charms if my grades don't pick up and Snape said my 'ineptitude' at Potions was among the worst he'd seen even for a First Year… and I'm sick, Tom, I haven't been able to write to you because I can hardly hold my quill_

_Except in all your classes._

_Oh Tom, I'm sorry, please, _please _don't be angry, I can't bear it if you don't like me. I'm so lonely and you're my only friend here_

_So I'm just a convenience to you, is that it?_

_No! No – I didn't mean it like that! Don't hate me, Tom, please, I'll make it up to you, I promise, I'll do anything _

_Do you know how _unbearable _it is being trapped in here? How _weak _I am? Fifty years I have endured in this darkness, unable to walk in the world. Fifty years since I have been able to hold a wand. You cannot even comprehend the things I was meant for. I wonder if you even care about me at all to leave me here so long in this way. _

_Of course I do, Tom! I _love _you. You're my best friend._

_These are just words, Ginevra. How can I believe you unless you prove it to me? But perhaps… yes… I think there is a way of showing me, if you are willing. If you _love _me. Then it is possible… If I asked you to do something for me, blindly, without question… would you do it?_

_Yes, Tom. _Anything._ Only I'm so tired… so…_

_It's all right, Ginevra. Close your eyes. Sleep._

_Tom…? Are you there? I can't… feel… anything…_

_Good. I'm sick to death of your snivelling and pathetic excuses. But now I have your attention, I want you to listen carefully. Fail me tonight and even your own family won't recognize your body once I'm done with you. But do this for me, and you will be rewarded. Never let it be said that Lord Voldemort is not generous to those who serve him faithfully… _

* * *

><p>She knew something had happened the moment he appeared in the gathering darkness. The air shimmered about him. A tension, a quietly brimming power that made her skin prickle. His cheekbones were high and tense, green fire eddying around his fingers. He was looking through her, beyond her. A deep, bone chill ran through her spine.<p>

"Tom…" She tried not to let the shaking enter her voice. "You look -"

He turned to her, smiling. He looked beautiful and young, his pale face full of joy and life and energy. "Albus Dumbledore's dead," he said. He sounded shocked. Bewildered. Impossibly happy.

Dumbledore. Whom her father and Hagrid had always said was the greatest wizard that ever lived. Ginny thought of the glimpses of Dumbledore she had seen in the great hall at Hogwarts, venerable and distant and untouchable. A face she had grown up knowing all her life; the long silver hair, the half-moon glasses, the twinkling kindness in his light blue eyes. The quiet surety in his gentle voice. And he was dead. Dead like Percy.

She should have been terrified, outraged, furious. Perhaps she was. But all she said was, "Did _you _kill him?"

"Yes."

The slow ebbing of mist, swathing the chamber in perpetual hanging veils. Illuminating his face with that strange, wild happiness. He looked down at his outstretched hands, marble-pale, that were shaking under the ephemeral light.

"Who else but me?" he murmured aloud. "Who else _could_ do it?"

Closer he came, his eyes dark and wide, lit from within by a burning fever. His skin flushed and glowing. "Do you know," he whispered, "How long I waited - how long I have _wanted -_ after so many years… I never thought it would be so easy._"_

His hands caught hers, long fingers entwining with her own. She tried to pull away, but he touched her chilled skin as though he meant to brand her. Suddenly pulling her into the circle of his body, he spun her breathlessly around the vast chamber, laughing and laughing, the high, cold sound resounding off the cavernous walls, echoing into madness. She had never seen him like this before, so wild, so drunk on the sense of his own power. He inhaled slowly, tipping his head back, as he closed his eyes and he spun her dizzyingly, endlessly. His cool hands scorched her.

When the echoes faded, he lowered his head, black hair curling damply over his brow. "There is nothing -" he said, his voice low with excitement, "Nothing I cannot do - and it was _you _who brought me back, _you _who made this possible… I had not intended to be indebted to you so, but there it is. Strange, I think, that we should be so bound to each other."

Horror seized her insides, but before she could say anything, he bent his head and kissed her, swift and burning. She tasted ink and dark poison and old power, fingers of emerald fire coiling around her heart.

"Can you feel it?" he breathed, his cool brow resting against hers. She could feel the pulse throbbing in his temples. "The beginning of a new world." He laughed suddenly. "And why not tonight? It starts here, as it always must."

The chamber spun, the world spun, his touch the sole thing tethering her to reality. She could feel the magic, the power, twisting through and through her, sending potent ripples along the charged air, breathing around them like a cold wind. Her pulse thudded, beating faster and faster until she was sure it would burst through the skin. Wild panic flooded her being.

_What's happening to me?_

"Just relax." Tom's voice was quiet against her ear. "I felt it like this the first time, too. It won't be long now. You will see - you will understand the truth of it, as I did."

The hanging curtains of vapour were no longer cold, but warm, writhing and glowing, taking form and shape and substance. Ginny saw serpents and chimeras, dragons and raptors and manticores in the tourmaline light, and a face, more ancient and powerful than any she had ever seen, the same face that was carved into the rock above them. She saw a dark cave in a distant land and a pale, long-fingered hand reach out for a rounded stone that gleamed with veins of bronze and green agate… a high, cold laugh… _yes, I have found it at last…_

Tom's arms tightened around her, fingers digging into her bones. She felt something coil and awaken outside herself, an answering call to a summons not yet uttered. She couldn't breathe. And still the mist rose higher, brighter and more beautiful and terrifying than anything she had ever seen.

The air aswirl with glowing jade light that held something reptilian and piercing cold at its heart. All spun past in an eddying tide of black and green and silver. Sheets of wildfire warring against each other, flaring and fading, _burning _against her flesh. The heat, the power was going to eat her alive. Tom was uttering words she could not understand, a low, murmured susurration that that hollowed walls seemed to know and whispered back in hundreds of countless echoes. _Parseltongue, _Ginny thought wonderingly. _He's speaking Parseltongue. _And she realised at last what he intended.

The mist surrounded them in shimmering, effervescent towers, high as mountains. Rising, coming towards them, a surge great and endless as the sea. It would swallow her whole. Ginny dug her heels into the stone, resisting, but it was no use. Power rushed along her skin, too bright and hot to bear. And suddenly she realised she could _understand _what he was saying -

…_Awaken… smell the blood, the _life_… come forth in the chamber of Salazar Slytherin… you were meant for this, _I _was meant for this… here, on these stones set in place for this moment a thousand years ago… Tonight, a new era, a new _world _begins, when together we purge the usurpers from these walls. And I swear, on the blood of my ancestor, that this world _will _be pure again -_

The walls were shaking with great convulsions, rocks falling from the ceiling as though the earth were tearing itself apart, but still Tom did not move. Green light and shadows danced across his pale features that were rigid with power and intent, wild and inhuman; whorls of emerald fire lit his eyes with insanity. Stirring, whirling, dancing around them, the world flashed by in searing sheets of jade and malachite and emerald fire, blinding -

His voice, hissing and serpentine, rose above the cataclysm –

_I am Lord Voldemort, heir of Salazar Slytherin! His blood runs through my veins and his power is mine. You are _my _creature and will do my bidding. I speak to you, I COMMAND you -_

_Awaken -_

_AWAKEN –-_

The stones _groaned –_

_**NOW -!**_

Then beneath the whispering swish and Tom's wild laughter, she heard it - a loud, rending crack that split the evanescent veils of obscurity.

Gradually, the ceaseless spinning slowed. The world was green-edged, floating. Ginny came to herself, shivering at the sudden cold that swept through the chamber once more. Tom had released her and was gazing, hungry and intent, at something over her shoulder.

Slowly, Ginny turned around. And through the dispersing veils, something rose from the shattered fragments of veined marble that smoked on the cold stones, uncoiling itself with a slow, sinuous grace.

Prismatic scales of raw, bronze-green, undulating -

Twisting, crawling forward on its belly -

A low, sibilant _hiss._


	4. Persephone

_**iv. Persephone**_

Shrouded in mists and greens and silver vapours, she sat on the carven stone, poppy-red hair framing her face in a blazing coronet. In her hands were parchments and at her feet a serpent. The chamber stretched before her, vaulted and silent, vast pillars casting their long shadows across the mirrored floor. The air hung heavy with the whispers of old blood, old bones and old magic. Ginny listened to the whispers, chained as she was by invisible cords; she listened because words were power and words were what had brought her to Tom and this place.

The snake stirred around her legs, rising to lay its jewelled head in her lap. Its yellow eyes should have glowed warm in the surrounding gloom, but they were cold. Ginny knew this because its gaze was not fatal yet, though already its fangs were longer than her hand. She absently ran a hand over the emerald scales, the intricate coils gleaming in the dim light. Flawless and deceptively smooth, but when rubbed the wrong way… she smiled ironically. How very like Tom to value such a creature.

The glimmer of emerald and silver flashed in the corner of her gaze. She looked up and there he was, watching her. Still so young. Impossibly handsome. And so very alive.

Ginny's heart contracted. Was it possible to hate someone so much you loved them? When did the line between loathing and longing blur?

"Did you miss me, Ginevra?"

"There's blood on your hands," was all she said.

"Is there?" He looked down carelessly. "I had not noticed."

She didn't ask who it belonged to. She had learned long ago to stop asking. He would always tell her if it was someone she knew.

Tom came towards her, smiling slightly at the sight of the seated girl with the snake curled docilely in her lap.

"Look at that. She likes you."

At the sound of Tom's voice, the Basilisk rose its head, sliding from Ginny with a lithe, fluid motion. Tom held out a slender hand and the serpent glided towards him, allowing him to stroke her armoured head.

"How is she?"

"See for yourself," she spat contemptuously. "She's your pet."

He raised a dark brow at the venom in her tone, but said nothing. His fingers traced idle circles over the scaled head. Jewelled eyes closed, heavy lidded. Tom regarded the snake thoughtfully. "She's getting bigger. I'll be able to let her out soon."

Ginny shuddered.

"Oh, don't look like that. You knew it was going to happen eventually."

"And what about me?" she said, her voice filled with loathing. "Are you going to let me out, Tom?"

He paused, regarding her consideringly. "You know, I don't think I will. I rather like having you down here. Like Persephone." She looked at him blankly and he laughed.

"I'll be free of you one day."

"Oh no," said Tom. "No, you won't. I won't let you be."

She took a step forward. The Basilisk raised its head from Tom's lazy caress and hissed at her. That seemed to amuse him. "Oh, you had better be careful not to make her angry. She might tolerate you, but in the end she answers only to me."

She thought how strange it was - these warnings coming from the mouth of the monster himself. Drawn to the voice of its master, the serpent coiled around Tom's black-clad leg in emerald rings, forked tongue flickering from side to side. Ginny watched it warily, wondering just how much of himself Tom had poured into her in those months she had written in the diary, wondering if any of it might give her power over the creature he valued so highly as his own, and so turn his own cunning against him. Yes, Tom had taught her about love and betrayal; love hurt and betrayal was inevitable. She had tried everything to bring his world down.

Tom reached out a slender hand, tilting her face up to his. His thumbs brushing over her pallid cheeks. "Nothing can hurt you while you're here, Ginevra. I promise you that." He smiled almost tenderly. "Nothing ever _will_ hurt you. Except me."

His hands, clasping her face, tensed. She was not surprised when he kissed her. Cruel satisfaction in the taste of his mouth, the stinging bitterness of it. He drew back and smiled, slow and heavy-lidded.

"Take off your clothes," he said.

Ginny glared at him. Then with one movement, she tugged savagely at the threaded cord of silver, the robes spilling to the stone floor with a soft sigh, the blackness pooling around her bare feet. The air was cold against her skin. Tom's eyes darkened as he looked down at her. A strange, hungry expression lit his pale features.

"Are you going to kill me tonight?"

"Perhaps," she said.

"You will try, you mean." His skin glowed alabaster in the ephemeral light. "Even though you know you can't. Perhaps that is _why _you try."

His long white hands moved over her small freckled ones. Black hair spilled into his eyes. Black as ink. Drowning. Deeper than the darkness that swallowed the world. Power shivered along her skin like a current of ice. He wasn't Voldemort - not quite yet_ - _but he was _something. _And it was growing ever stronger.

He slid his hands down her body. Ginny clenched her jaw, determined not to make a sound. She felt the heavy brocade of his robes beneath her fingers. Perhaps if she gathered that material together and twisted it around his throat… Once, she had tried to strangle him as he slept, watching the purple bruises blossoming beneath his white skin. Only _then _he had caught her, and…

She cringed away from the memory, at the fact that she might just have liked it after she awoke with languid eyes and chilled skin, Tom's long arm thrown around her waist as he slept.

Lips brushing her shoulder, tracing the line of her collarbone. A velvet whisper against her flesh. "I think you love me, just a little."

Her lips framed a denial, but only a gasp escaped her at the sharp edge of his teeth that caught her in a bruising kiss. Her hands pushed against him. His skin was cool and smooth. His body, long and curved, drawing her against him. In spite of herself, she felt a shiver of sensation _(pleasure)_ uncoiling in her lower stomach. In the edge of her vision, she could see the Basilisk swaying languidly, writhing amidst the loose folds of her discarded robe, glittering eyes half-closed.

Tom's fingers dug into her hips. Touching every nerve in her body to the point of pain. Sinking into her bones. Her heart banged with scalding fury. She was sick with desire.

He angled his head to meet her lips. Ginny closed her eyes -

and had a sudden image of a snake slowly swallowing her whole, coiling around her body in a fatal embrace, distended jaws opening wide, curved fangs sinking into her flesh and the sweet, piercing completeness of its bite. Annihilating venom coursing drowsily through the blood, the exquisite, burning pain drawing her down into death and she followed it willingly… like Tom, she had touched death and tasted the forbidden, intoxicating sweetness, both fearing and hungering for it -

"_Tom -" _(was that _her _voice, so high and strained beyond all control?)

He laughed softly. Long, beautiful hands never stilling their slow, caressing movement. He never lost control. He seemed to find it amusing when she shuddered and cried out and hit him. Low whispers of desire in her ear. His voice surrounding her like an insidious vapour that had the power to poison sleep with dreams of fevered wanting. Mirroring the dance of those sweeping fingers, she swayed in rhythm, like the serpent, boneless and fluid.

Down, down, into the mist and dreams and swirling darkness… cold stone beneath her, but not as cold as his skin…

His hand slid between her legs and she gasped. She was melting away, her body perilously close to sinking into the emerald power she could sense beneath the surface. Consuming her soul away. Her destiny and her destruction.

Half-desperate with sickening need, she breathed a harsh whisper that she would later deny she had ever uttered –

"Tom, do you…?"

A liquid, ephemeral silence that seemed to hold the weight of ages. Then -

"No," he breathed, and pulled her down with him into the darkness.

* * *

><p><strong>October 31<strong>**st****, 1992**

_Have you ever been in love, Tom?_

_What an odd question. Why do you ask?_

_No reason._

_Does it have something to do with Harry Potter?_

_I… no. It's nothing._

_You can tell me. Remember that you can trust me. _Only_ me. I want to know everything there is to know about you, Ginevra. I want to know you as well as I know myself. I want you to trust me above all others. To know that you can pour your heart into these pages. There is nothing you can say or do that will make me leave you. You know that, don't you?_

_Yes, Tom._

_You have my devotion, Ginevra. Do I have yours?_

_Yes, Tom. Of _course.

_And do you swear that it will never waver, never alter, never change? Because understand that I could never forgive you if you abandoned me. I need you to _love _me. To _willingly _offer me your body and soul. This is where it begins, Ginevra. This is the night where we change the world._

_You sound so strange, Tom. I don't understand._

_No. But you will._

* * *

><p>He found Harry's name carved into one of the rocks. She had written it there years ago, had barely even thought about it since (hadn't <em>let <em>herself think about it) but kept it locked in her heart, always, a symbol of everything she had once loved and lost.

She was lying back against the shadowed domes of Salazar Slytherin's robed feet, idly dreaming of long-ago things (when love hadn't really been love and pain hadn't been real pain), when he gripped her wrist, pulling her roughly to her feet.

"Do you think your pathetic childhood fancy matters to me? Do you think I _care?_"

She laughed in his face. "You're jealous."

"Jealous?" His face was paper-white, eyes twin circles of black ink. "You -"

"Go on," she said. "Tell me I'm useless. Tell me you'll _kill _me. You won't."

"You don't know what I'm capable of."

"I know you're scared of him. And you should be. You've had four years and you still haven't killed him. Why is that, Tom?"

She provoked him, brilliant and vicious and blazing, a pleasure almost as intense as she found in his hard mouth and pleasure-pain touches. Always secretly wondering if he would finally kill her (and perhaps even wanting it a little). But he only laughed. "All Harry Potter is good at is not dying. That's not skill or heroism - it's luck."

"Then he'll be lucky again."

"He won't –" Tom paused suddenly, his eyes gleaming. "Ah… but that's what this is about, isn't it? You think he'll come here and save you… that you somehow _matter _to him. You matter to no one, Ginevra."

Her veins flooded with words. _You have my devotion, Ginevra… do I have yours?_

Hands on her shoulders, turning her. A mirror appeared in the air before her, glassy and shimmering. Ginny pressed her palms flat against the cold glass. It seemed she lived in a clouded mirror, of whispered memories and watered dreams, fleeting and insubstantial, near-translucent. Her breath misted the surface.

_What am I? Am I real? Am I written?_

Tom's fingers tightened on her, cool and firm. "Look at yourself."

She looked. Her reflection emerged slowly through the deep green tendrils, the face of a drowning girl. Small and slender and freckled, the flame-red hair she had never liked winding over her thin shoulders like scarlet vines in a woven foliage of jade silk. A snake curlicue curled silver at the base of her throat. Words written in a book appeared in the pages of her mind. _I think you are pretty, Ginny. I think your brothers are lying to you, because they don't want anyone else to have you. I think Harry will notice you, but when he finally does, you will have changed so much that he won't deserve you…_

It was possibly the only thing he hadn't lied about.

Tom standing over her shoulder. There was a strange intensity in his eyes, a flicker of yearning. But Ginny knew it wasn't her that fascinated him, but merely that extension of himself, belonging to him yet beyond him. Something that was utterly his, yet he could never quite possess.

"What do you see?" His voice was soft.

"Myself."

"And?"

She tossed her hair. "And an arrogant prat."

She saw his mouth tighten at the edges. He might have taken over her, but she had written herself beneath his skin too. She was strangely pleased with the idea that this might be just as much a torture for him. Her pleasures in this place were few, but she drank deeply from their bitter dregs. Even the deepest hells had their moments of gratification.

She had stared into the abyss, and the abyss had become her home.


	5. Orpheus

_**v. Orpheus**_

"You're not alone here, Ginevra," he whispered into her hair, soft and sweet. "You're never alone." Slow kisses down the curve of her throat that arched, arched so far back into him she could fall and die… His hands, light and lithe, tracing the curves of her waist lost beneath a sea of green silk, pressing with delicious pain against the sharp bones of her hips. She shivered, burned by the poison of his touch. Her nails dug bloody crescents into his arms. Red colours. Gryffindor colours. _Now I've marked you too, _she thought.

Their exchanges were different from those old diary days of soft words and elusive promises from the lips of an imagined boy dreamed up from ink and paper. Nothing elusive in the slide of pale limbs on a bed of stone, slowly destroying herself as she succumbed to the heady decadence of her own dark desires. Everything she loathed _(craved)._ He was written beneath her skin. His eyes. His mouth. His hands. Cold, so cold.

Yet not so much was changed. His haunting words still had the power to destroy her. He built her up and tore her down again; he told her she was beautiful and strong and fierce, that she was wild and burned like fire; he told her she was a weak, pathetic little idiot that nobody cared about, that she was a naïve fool who now had blood on her hands and was responsible for the darkness in the world. No one else would ever want her, no one else would ever accept her, _apart from me because I understand the darkness in you, I've seen it, I _created _it… they would never understand what binds us together, that you could never be as you once were because I am all you ever wanted, ever dreamed of, you poured yourself into me and I into you, and we can never be parted, my sweet, stupid… Ginny._

His hands were ice-cold against her upturned face. She had grown to hate the cold and hunger for it, the cruel tenderness of his sliding touch as familiar as the sight of her own (indistinct) reflection. His lips unexpectedly soft against her own, bending her body backwards as the veiled world blurred and swayed into green mist and the dark, dark_, dark_ –

"Wait…" Ginny murmured. His lips continued a deadly caress down the line of her neck and she tried to _think _through the – pale fingers bit into her thighs and she choked – torturing, ecstatic thrill it provoked. Tried to concentrate through the mellow, drowsing darkness… (Tom laughed softly. _You're trying to _resist _now?)_

There was a strange, pulsing quality in the air. She had become attuned to this place now, understood its intricate workings, felt the elusive, ancient power that breathed beneath the surface. She closed her eyes and _felt _– a shift, like the parting of water –

_Someone's here._

Tom's glance flashed on her and she felt the probing fingers of Legilemency inside her mind.

"Who would come here?" He smiled. "Who would dare?"

Ginny stared at him and said nothing. But her heart was thudding. Never, in _four years _had anyone…

She looked up at Tom though lowered lashes. He said nothing, but his face was white and set. _He's scared, _she realized with a savage rush of delight. Something had come here beyond his knowledge, beyond his control, beyond his _power – _

The darkness at the Chamber entrance stirred. Tom's grip tightened on her wrist. A deeper blackness moved in the yawning serpentine mouth where the stalactites hung down like sharpened fangs and something – _someone _– stumbled onto the stone floor. Rubies glinted like drops of blood on the end of a drawn sword -

"Riddle," said a voice.

Ginny's heart felt like it would burst.

_Harry._

It was Harry and yet not Harry. His hair was longer, black and wild as it fell into his eyes, eyes that blazed hard emerald behind the cracked glasses. All angles and bones as she remembered, but he was tall, as tall as Tom almost. The lightning bolt scar still ran jagged across his brow, but she had scars too, scars beneath the skin (etched into her heart and soul) that no one would never see _(because they weren't looking, Ginevra, I'm the only one who ever saw you, ever noticed, never forget that, never…) _

Behind her, a movement like a shadow, an angular silhouette emerging through the clinging mist. Tangled black hair, long fingers. Dark murder in his eyes. A villain with the face of an angel. Both stood still, mirror images of one another. Twin doppelgangers, and the likeness caused a stirring, a strange, ethereal pain in her chest. One so hated. One so loved.

"Riddle," said Harry warily. His voice was different. Deeper. More confident. No dream, this. Not merely a name in her recollection. He was Harry. He was real.

"I knew you would come," Tom breathed, a strangely ecstatic expression illuminating his pale features. "I knew it. Though you took longer than I expected. But I knew you wouldn't disappoint me. And you have the sword? That's good, too."

Both were watching each other, wary, waiting for other to make the first move. The words burst from Ginny before she could help it. "Harry, get out!"

Harry's head flew up, pale with shock. He staggered backwards, staring at her uncomprehendingly. "You're alive –" he whispered. "All this time..."

"No thanks to you." She could hear the curving derision in Tom's voice. "Look at your champion, Ginevra. Is this your white knight? Someone who gave you up for dead, who didn't think you worth finding, not even to recover your bones for your poor, pathetic parents –"

Harry's face turned ashen. "We tried," he said hoarsely. "We tried for _months, _for nearly two _years -" _He looked at her helplessly. Ginny coolly wondered what he saw. A girl (_no longer quite a girl_) all red and white (who slept in a coffin of ice), shrouded in cool green. A fairytale princess whose story began in ink and ended in blood. So delicate, so dangerous. Then his jaw hardened.

"Ginny," he said. "Run."

She dug her feet into the stone (water seeping into her skin, so cool, so smooth). "No." And for a horrible moment, she was unsure who she was staying for.

Tom looked at her approvingly. "She won't run. Do you really think she would want to? That she _could? _She'll stay with me, as she was always meant to." _(Always and forever) _His calm certainty turned her blood to ice, deepened her bone-weary despair.

"You should be honored, Harry," he continued smoothly. "I've thought a lot about destroying you, how I would do it. You've not proven particularly easy to kill." He raised his wand, his eyes dreamy.

The air suddenly looped and curved, erupting. A wall of flame flashing red and gold between them. Tom snatched his hand back as though burned. "I suppose I should be impressed." His eyes narrowed. "You're not a child any more, are you, Harry Potter?" (_We none of us are children anymore)._

Suddenly, Harry was at her side, one hand on her arm, steady and protective. He seemed too sharp, too bright to be real in her world of whispering mists and elusive imaginings. "That should hold him off for a bit."

Ginny didn't tell him that his counter-charm had affected her too – made her feel like she was crawling out of her own skin.

"Ginny," he said. "About Percy - I'm so sorry -"

"It's alright," she said, and meant it. That had been long ago, when she was still a child, hot palmed and petulant, shedding futile, angry tears. How strangely distant it seemed now. When had she stopped being innocent? Was she naive for hoping Harry could heal her?

Harry continued to look at her anxiously. "Ginny. Has Riddle…?" The words were fumbled and awkward (the memory of a skinny boy with bottle green eyes, always so solemn and polite) but his face was hard and intense. Had he really been on the run for four years? "Has he hurt you?"

What could she say to that? _He destroyed my world and built me a new one where no one could touch us, he took my body and soul, he shattered all my hopes and dreams and promised me everything, he made me poisoned and hopeless, and he will never, _never _leave me…_

She could see him walking to and fro on the other side of the magical barrier, his eyes fixed unceasingly on her. Entrancing. Terrifyingly dangerous. "I hate him," she said in a low, fierce voice. "I hate him, I _hate_ him –"

Harry's hand caught hold of her own, his grip firm and reassuring. Ginny felt her pulse throb at the brief contact and drew a breath in shock. Was it really possible that she was still in love with him?

She heard Tom's voice in her head, something he had told her in those final hours before death, when every word had been a betrayal. _Love is an illusion, merely the refusal to admit that you are held in another's power – _

"He's completely mad," Harry was saying, shaking his head. "Whether it's because he's alive when he shouldn't be, or because there's two of them walking around - it's turned his mind, somehow."

"He's still dangerous. The things he's _done _and going to do _– _oh, Harry – be _careful! –"_

An expression flashed across his face that she could not discern, set his features alight with a strange intensity. "I will," he said. "I promise." And he sealed the words with a kiss.

It was a brief, hard kiss that tasted of salt and fever and blood. Molten gold and polished wood and fresh grass, everything that was _Harry_ went into that kiss. It made Ginny's head spin and she clung to his tense arms to steady herself. This wasn't drowning, this was flying, soaring over the world, out of the cloying mists and chill darkness and –

It was over far too soon. He pulled away, looking anxious and worried and earnest, in the way that only Harry could. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I shouldn't have – I don't know why I –"

"Shut up," she said, and he looked startled at her boldness. But of course, she had been a child when he saw her last.

She heard Tom release a hiss of breath through his teeth. Through the unhealthy flames, his face was lit with possession and rage, his dark eyes insane. "You don't think I'll let you take her, do you? That I would let you come _between _us?"

Harry stared. "You're mental."

Ginny gave a gasp that was almost laughter (the first time in four years). It was such - such a _Ron _thing to say.

"You know…" said Tom idly, twirling his wand between his long fingers. She could see him more clearly now through the dimming wall of flame and knew it would not be long. "She talked about you a lot, at first. But now -" he smiled cruelly - "It's not _your _name she calls out in the dark."

Fury flashed through Harry's eyes. "You –"

The last remnants of the fire died away. Tom spread open his hands, his face calm and serene. Only the eyes were alive, glittering with some secret, deadly amusement. "Kill me then, Harry. You must want to know what it's like. How it would feel."

"Fawkes," said Harry quietly.

The phoenix flew across the length of the chamber and it burned. It burned so bright Ginny had to look away. A gold feather fell into her lap. It smelled of Harry - blood and grass - and she clutched it tight in her hand. And it dropped something else that Harry caught, as swiftly as he would in a game of Quidditch.

Tom was looking at the bird, narrow-eyed.

"Dumbledore gave him to me. He's mine now."

"Dumbledore," Tom replied with a sneer. "He always was too scared to fight his own battles. Not that it matters now. This was always about you and me."

"Then let's finish this," said Harry. And in his hand he held Riddle's diary.

Tom drew a sharp breath. Turned as still and tense as a snake about to strike. "Where did you get that?"

"So it's true," said Harry. "This is what brought you back. So if I destroy it… then you die, too."

"No – _no –_ _accio diary –_"

"_Expelliarmus," _said Harry calmly. And he raised the book and murmured something faintly. The pages began turning, fluttering, as though caught in a strong wind –

Tom started to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. The whole chamber rang with it, the hollowed, terrible sound magnifying into infinity. Then, ignoring Harry, he turned to her. And Ginny saw it at last; he was riddled with love for her, and felt it like a sickness in his veins.

"Come here." He held out his hands, ink flowing in writhing patterns beneath the skin. His voice tugged her, pulled at the dark places inside her soul. _Come with me. Side with me. Die with me. _Ginny stared at him and said nothing.

His smile was frightening. "Won't you?"

_Yes Tom. Never Tom. _Her nails dug into her palms until they cracked and bled. His insidious tones sweet and soothing and compelling…_ (I can still give you the world. You want the world, don't you?) _She didn't move.

"You ungrateful little brat," he said coldly. "You do know that he'll forget you again, don't you, just as he did before? He didn't come here for _you._"

Harry was staring at him in disgust. Tom turned to him smilingly. "She'll come back for me. She has no choice but to. For what is Ginny without Tom?"

"Happy," Ginny said, and for one shining, glorious moment, she meant it.

His eyes narrowed. "Is that what think? That you can lie to me? You're mine, Ginevra. Never forget that I made you - I can destroy you just as easily."

She grinned. Hard and bright and reckless. "Then destroy me, Tom."

He moved towards her, incensed _(distracted)_ –

She threw a desperate glance at Harry, red hair flying over her shoulders. _Now._

Somehow, Tom heard her. In a flash, he turned, raised his wand –

"_Avada Kedav –"_

As Harry plunged the sword into the diary.

There was a great rending, tearing, a shriek louder than the breaking of the world. But Ginny didn't hear it, because she was tearing also, invisible bindings snapping from her skin, her bones. She felt the blade as it buried itself in the heart of the book. A piercing, terrible light burst from its pages, illuminating the chamber with a blinding radiance. She felt the searing pain of it, and knew that Tom did, too, because his pain was hers, and his mind and will, the two of them bound together with ink and blood, inextricable, now and for always. And it seemed he held out his arms for her, inviting her to come to him one last time, so they could lie together in this stone tomb, entwined with one another for eternity. Then the mist whirled and writhed, and the image was chased away, dissolving into thin air. And she was dissolving, too, ripping apart at the seams like so many pages. Words flowed across her skin, ink opening her veins, leaking from her pores, pouring out her (Tom's) life's blood. Everything she had written into him, everything he had written into her, whispers and promises and old lies...

* * *

><p><strong>May 29<strong>**th****, 1993**

_You're not… going to win…_

_Oh, still alive are you, Ginevra? I thought you would be long dead by now. Not that it matters, I suppose. The end result will be the same. Take your time._

_Harry will come…_

_I certainly hope so. That was the point of this elaborate set-up, after all. I want him here to see the grand finish._

_He's… going to kill you…_

_You really are a stupid child, aren't you? Even supposing your Harry _could _defeat me, you will never be free of me. How could you be? I look out through your eyes. Everyone will see me in your dead face and know what you really are. You should be grateful, really. I have given you so much, Ginevra. I have made you… extraordinary._

* * *

><p>Harry's warm hand on her shoulder roused her. She was surrounded by torn pages sodden with ink, the paper still smouldering slightly at the edges. There were traces of ink smeared across her face and arms, dripping onto the stone floor, clotting in her bright hair that was spread around her like a pool of blood.<p>

"Ginny?" Harry was leaning over her, his thin face streaked with dirt. His hand was firm and steady on her shoulder, the sword lying at his feet, the inlaid rubies glimmering with a dull red fire.

"I'm alright." The words were dragged hoarsely from her dry throat. She picked herself up, casting an uncertain glance around the chamber. Darkness and silence surrounded them.

"Tom…?"

"He's gone. For good, I hope."

Ginny swallowed hard. Was she supposed to be _glad? _She was free of him, really free; she knew it from the lightness of her body, the detachment she felt from the chamber, just an old stone room like any other. Her shrill, ringing laugh reverberated off the hollowed walls, high and brittle and cold.

Something stirred in the gloom. Her heart pounded thickly and ink swam in her head _(I will _never _let you go…) _Lissome and silver-green, mirrored scales shimmering like finely tempered steel –

Something curled tight in her chest. Relief _(disappointment)._ It was only the Basilisk, sliding fluidly toward them. She wondered if it too, sensed its master's absence and did not know what to do, did not know how to live. Such leashed power, now so unharnessed._ (And so the last shall do what the first could not… the power is _yours, _sweet Ginevra. Do with it what you will. And know I will be watching)_

Harry raised the sword. "Don't look –"

"Leave it," Ginny said fiercely.

He stared her. "But –"

"You have your pet. I have mine." Her hand traced the scaled head almost lovingly. Her voice was soft, reflective. "She was always more mine than his, anyway." It was all of Tom she had left. She would cherish it (love and whisper sweet words, then slowly destroy it and take sweet pleasure in its pain as she crushed it beneath her feet).

"Ginny…" Harry was still gazing at her uncertainly. His eyes. So vividly green, like cut glass. Both a reminder, and a curse. "Are you _sure _you're okay?"

"Yes," she murmured absently. "I just want..." (what _did _she want?) "I want to go home," she managed at last. Yes. Home. She was sick of green stone walls and death. Harry looked relieved. He understood that (he understood so little and she knew so very much, such forbidden knowledge she had learned).

Ginny smiled at him, hard and bright. Her other hand came to rest on his arm, and she sensed her power there as well. "Let me see the world again."

He took her hand and led her into the sunlight.


End file.
